At about 2:10 on May 1, a highway pavement collapse accident occurred near K11+900m (about 2 kilometers in the direction of the exit of Chayang Road) from Dapu to Fujian on Meida Expressway in Guangdong, with a road surface length of about 17.9 meters and an area of about 184.3 square meters.
According to Xinhua News Agency, as of 15 o'clock on May 1, after on-site verification, the accident caused a total of 20 vehicles to fall (no hazardous vehicles, buses and other large vehicles were found), involving a total of 54 people, of which 24 were confirmed dead, and 30 people are being treated in the hospital with no danger to life.
After the accident, Guangdong Province set up an accident rescue site headquarters, and more than 500 people from public security, emergency, fire protection, health, transportation, and mine rescue teams participated in the on-site rescue.
Yicai learned that the accident personnel have been arranged to be treated in relevant hospitals, and ambulances from all towns and villages in Dapu County have rushed to the scene to participate in the rescue.
"Ambulances from all the townships went to the scene"
According to The Paper, a car owner witnessed the accident and learned from communicating with the car owner at the scene that a number of cars fell from the high speed, and some of them caught fire. When an elderly car owner found out about the situation, he quickly stopped the car and ran back hundreds of meters to stop the car to prevent further accidents from the vehicles behind him. Some car owners who passed by the road where the incident occurred also left messages on the Internet saying that many cars had fallen from the highway and that explosions had been heard at the scene.
A netizen described behind the related news: Her husband drove a big card, and when he passed by the road where the incident occurred, he fortunately found that he did not fall into the landslide in time, and then immediately turned around, and the rescue team had not yet arrived. This netizen rejoiced, "Fortunately, I stopped a lot of cars when I turned around, otherwise I don't know how many cars and people were affected."
A woman with an IP in Fujian posted under the news of the accident that she could not contact her family who had returned to Fujian from Wuzhou. She told Yicai that her uncle returned to his hometown in Longyan, Fujian Province from Wuzhou, Guangxi at 8 o'clock last night, and at 11:39 p.m., he was located in the family group, and according to the time, he may have been at the scene when the accident occurred. There were uncles, aunts and three children in the car. Family members contact their phones and children's watches are turned off. There are three high-speed routes from Wuzhou to Longyan, two of which will pass through the Meilong Expressway. The woman said that she began to call stations along the route at four o'clock, and by six o'clock, a staff member informed her that there had been a serious collapse accident on the Meizhou Expressway.
The woman told Yicai that she called several hospitals near the place where the incident occurred, but the hospitals told her to wait for official news. But she also got a message that "may be good news", that is, the hospital helped her compare the list and told her that there were no five people from his family in the list of the injured and dead. At present, her family is rushing to Meizhou.
In the Meida Highway pavement collapse accident, the injured patients have been taken to the hospital for treatment. The first financial reporter learned in an interview that at present, most of the injured have been sent to Meizhou People's Hospital (Huangtang Hospital) and Dapu County People's Hospital.
Medical staff from Dapu County People's Hospital told Yicai on the phone that after the Meida Expressway collapse, ambulances from all local towns and villages had rushed to the scene to participate in the rescue.
A relevant staff member of the 120 Command Center of Dapu County People's Hospital told the first financial reporter that after the accident, Dapu County People's Hospital 120 began to send vehicles to receive the injured. "We have the injured on our side, and there are also people on the Meizhou People's Hospital (Huangtang Hospital). ”
A relevant staff member of Meizhou People's Hospital (Huangtang Hospital) told reporters that it was inconvenient to disclose the specific number of people and injuries. "[Patients] send us all of them, and we receive them all. ”
However, the CBN reporter failed to provide more information about the treatment, and the hospital informed that only family members who arrived at the scene could learn more.
It was built less than ten years ago, and there were multiple tests of geology and climate
Meilong Expressway is of great significance to the development of Meizhou.
According to public information, Meida Expressway, also known as Meilong Expressway, is a highway connecting Meijiang District and Dapu County in Meizhou City, Guangdong Province, which started construction on January 11, 2010 and was completed and put into operation on December 31, 2014.
The first financial reporter learned by checking the official website of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Transportation that the starting point of Meida Expressway is located in Triangle Town, Meijiang District, passing through Xiyang Town, Bingcun Town, Yanyang Town, Meixian County, Yinjiang Town, Hemp Town, Dapu County, and ending in Sanhe Town, Dapu County. The total length of the highway line is 61.3 kilometers, and the two-way four-lane standard with a design speed of 100 km/h is used for construction, with 48 bridges and extra-large bridges, 14 tunnels, and 5 interchanges, with a total investment of about 5.637 billion yuan.
According to the official website of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Transportation, the construction unit of Meida Expressway is Guangdong Road and Bridge Construction and Development Co., Ltd. According to public information, Guangdong Road and Bridge Construction and Development Co., Ltd. was established in 1994 with the approval of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Transportation, and is a nationally owned enterprise invested and established by the Guangdong Provincial Highway Administration. The company was decoupled from the Guangdong Provincial Highway Administration on September 8, 2000 and transferred to Guangdong Communications Group Co., Ltd. as a wholly-owned subsidiary.
According to a 2006 report by Guangzhou Daily, the completion of the Meron Expressway will reduce the travel time between Shanghai and Guangzhou by 150 kilometers, saving nearly two hours of travel time. The opening of the Meilong Expressway provides a fast and convenient passage from northeast Guangdong to Fujian and East China, making Guangdong's expressway network more perfect.
In 2011, the Guangdong Provincial Inspection Team went to Meizhou and pointed out that the construction of the Meida Expressway is related to the smooth realization of the goal of "county-to-county expressway" of the Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government, and it is also a popular project and a moral and political project for the benefit of the masses in the old revolutionary base area of Dapu.
At the moment, there is no information about the cause of this collapse. Past public information shows that the topography and geology of the Meida Expressway are complex and the safety risk is high.
According to the data, Meida Expressway passes through the Nanling Lotus Mountains, and most of the mountains and hills along the way, the mountains are abrupt, the ravines are dense, the terrain is steep, the valley is narrow, far away from the town, and it is difficult for large machinery to give full play to its advantages, and the construction difficulty and construction volume increase. The proportion of bridges and tunnels on the whole line reached 51%, which was the highest among the mountainous expressways in Guangdong Province at that time, and there were many high-risk situations such as roofing, landslides, and water permeability during the construction. For example, Dapu County Radio and Television Station said in a report on the second phase of the Meida Expressway that there are two tunnels of more than 1,000 kilometers in just 9.8 kilometers, Yanggongling Tunnel and Sanhe Tunnel, so the construction of the project will inevitably be costly, difficult to construct, and high safety risk.
Since the completion of the Meida Expressway, there have been more than one accident caused by natural disasters along the route, such as a large landslide in early May 2023 a year ago.
The recent heavy rainfall in Guangdong has also put the highway to the test, which has been built less than 10 years ago. According to a message released on the official website of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Transportation on April 30, highways and ordinary national and provincial roads in some areas of Guangdong have been damaged due to the continuous heavy rainfall. As of 4:00 p.m. on April 30, a total of 19 affected sections of the expressway have been restored, 6 have been restored, and the remaining 13 have been partially closed, and the remaining 9 affected sections of ordinary national and provincial highways are still under two-way traffic control.
(This article is from Yicai)